Financial Reflections

You’ve seen the commercials.  They often have a supporting actor from a current TV show or local news anchor talking to you about making the transition to digital television.  They ask questions like: “Will your TV work?” and “Can you still use your antenna?”  They talk a lot without answering many questions.  Well, be prepared to hear them for months more.

As you may know, all television broadcasts were to make the switch from an analog signal, like we’ve used since Farnsworth’s era, to a nifty new digital signal, which promises to give a better signal and picture.  The transition was scheduled to take place on February 17th, 2009.  Well, the government had determined that not enough people had gotten converter boxes to make the transition to digital TV.  By “not enough” I mean up to 20 million TV sets.  I didn’t realize there even *were* 20 million TVs still using the old “rabbit ears” method of getting a signal.

So what happened?  Why are so many TV’s out of date?  First of all, the government had offered $40 coupon cards to help people buy a DTV converter box for their TV.  Problem was, they ran out of money to meet the demand for coupon cards.  They also ran (in my opinion) confusing commercials (which inexplicably played on cable channels as well as broadcast stations) and added a confusing web site.

To add insult to injury, the DTV Delay Act, which was recently signed into law to make the DVT deadline change still allows TV stations to make the digital transition *before* June 12th.  So those 20 million rabbit-eared TVs may still fall silent for some stations.  The DTV.gov site, designed to help with this problem can’t keep pace with the legislation change.  At  the time of this writing, it reads “DTV.gov is in the process of being updated to reflect the new deadline.”  Didn’t they hear all the stories of the possible deadline change?

I’ve been known to be a bit frugal with televisions, from my reluctance to get an HDTV, to when I eventually got a great deal on and HDTV when my old set died.  So where does this leave the frugal TV owner still using rabbit ears?  Well, if you’ve been waiting to get a converter box, you might want to get one now, as the transition could very well hit you as soon as next week, no matter what the new deadline is.  Too cheap to buy one?  Well, you still can apply for a coupon and hope one goes unused for 90 days and expires.  Have a coupon?  Use it before that 90-day deadline hits you, because the coupons won’t work after that.

Or, you could just do what I did and get satellite service, so you’re already getting a working signal. 

Got a DVT story to share?  Did you actually get one of those coupons?  Tell me about it in the comments below…